Integrating accurate air quality modeling with decision making is hampered by complex atmospheric physics and chemistry and its coupling with atmospheric transport. Existing approaches to model the physics and chemistry accurately lead to significant computational burdens in computing the response of atmospheric concentrations to changes in emissions profiles. By integrating a reduced form of a fully coupled atmospheric model within a unit commitment optimization model, we allow, for the first time to our knowledge, a fully dynamical approach toward electricity planning that accurately and rapidly minimizes both cost and health impacts. The reduced-form model captures the response of spatially resolved air pollutant concentrations to changes in electricity-generating plant emissions on an hourly basis with accuracy comparable to a comprehensive air quality model. The integrated model allows for the inclusion of human health impacts into cost-based decisions for power plant operation. We use the new capability in a case study of the state of Georgia over the years of 2004-2011, and show that a shift in utilization among existing power plants during selected hourly periods could have provided a health cost savings of $175.9 million dollars for an additional electricity generation cost of $83.6 million in 2007 US dollars (USD 2007 ). The case study illustrates how air pollutant health impacts can be cost-effectively minimized by intelligently modulating power plant operations over multihour periods, without implementing additional emissions control technologies.air pollution | electricity generation | health impacts | externalities | energy policy I n 2013, coal was used to produce 39% of the electricity in the United States (1), the largest portion of generation from any fuel type. During combustion, electricity generation from fossil fuels, such as coal, produces large quantities of primary gaseous pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) and nitrogen oxide (NO X ), which are major contributors to air pollution. These gaseous emissions interact with the atmosphere downwind of source emissions, forming several secondary air pollutants, including sulfate-based fine particulates less than 2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter (PM 2.5 ) and ozone (O 3 ). Sulfate-based PM 2.5 comprises an estimated average of 24% of the ambient PM 2.5 in the United States (2), and can be controlled, in part, by a reduction in SO 2 emissions. Increased PM 2.5 concentrations cause increased mortality and asthma rates, as well as nonfatal heart attacks, emergency room visits, and hospital visits (3).Previous studies have integrated air pollution impacts into energy system models, but these studies lacked heterogeneous hourly and seasonal temporal pollutant formation. Muller et al. (9) to assess the health impacts of major emissions sectors in the United States. These studies have all made important contributions to the quantitative understanding of the health impacts of air pollution from electricity, transportation, and industrial systems...
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